fevnut's musings 2023/#12: Last week's referee, Aston's comments and Top of the Table

  

 

 Last Sunday’s referee

 

Those of you who have regularly read ‘fevnut’s musings’ over the years will know that we do not accuse referees of cheating and bias. Indeed, a few years ago now, we wrote an article for the rugby league press in which we analysed the performance of referees with regard to penalties and the use of cards. Statistical analysis of that data indicated that there were major differences between referees but that most certainly did not include any evidence whatsoever of bias.

However, and nothing to do with bias, referees have good days and sometimes have bad days and occasionally have a real shocker. In other words, they are human beings! And we have seen few more shocking performances than the one we witnessed in the game against Sheffield last Sunday.

It was abundantly clear to see the tactics being employed by Sheffield and a referee, on a good day, would have put a stop to it early on. Lack of action by the referee was the cause of some very unsavoury incidents because players began to realise they could get away with it.

The late tackle by Cory Aston that flattened Thomas Lacans was as bad as you will see and, in our opinion, it clearly merited a red card but the referee didn’t even give a penalty. Unbelievable!

The referee’s lack of control over the match led to him dishing out 4 yellow cards in a very short space of time, but by then it was too late for him to properly regain control.

 

 

Sheffield Eagles

As we saw it, Sheffield came to the match with a game plan that was to spoil whenever and wherever possible. They were hugely helped in getting away with that game plan by the weak refereeing.

Clearly, they didn’t have any confidence that they could beat us by playing rugby!

We read what Mark Aston had to say after the game and it is truly laughable as well as demonstrating that he can’t even count.

He said that the game was ‘spoilt’. Yes, of course it was. It was spoilt by the tactics he employed.

Here is a longer quote from him: “I guess it would have been quite an entertaining game if it had been allowed to be,” Aston said on the Sheffield Eagles’ YouTube Channel.

“The scoreline suggests that but 13 against 10, really? There’s some questions that need answering because the two teams that were out there I thought had a dig and it was good but it was spoilt.”

At no point was it 13 against 10. First of all Halafihi was sin binned for dangerous contact. That made it 13 against 12. Then, a few minutes later, there was a bad flop from Cory Aston and Riley Dean went running in and they were both sin-binned which would have made it 12 against 11 but Jesse Sene-Lefao showed dissent and off to the sin bin he went as well, making it 12 against 10.

We have been very critical of the referee but we do believe that all four yellow cards were justified.

The two-man advantage only lasted for four minutes before Halafihi returned but the decisive score of the match came when both sides were back to 13 players.

There is a big lesson for our players to learn from this. The tactics employed by Sheffield are likely to be repeated by other teams who know that they can’t beat Fev by playing skilful and incisive rugby.

Until Riley Dean ran in, our discipline was remarkable in the face of what we were being given. It’s hard to blame Riley but we do need to show the same sort of resolve that most Fev players displayed if and when we face these tactics again.

Let’s hope when another team does try it on, like Sheffield did, we will have a referee who takes proper control and does something about if before it is too late!

 

Milestones

Congratulations from last Sunday’s game to Brad Day who made his 50^th appearance for Fev and to Riley Dean who kicked his 50^th career goal and reached 150 career points.

 

Security

We love looking at the Championship table as it now stands.

 

Few teams ever go through a season without having a blip at some stage. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to us in 2023, but, if it does, we have built up a nice cushion to get us through it.

The real icing on the cake will be if we beat Toulouse on June 10^th, and we see absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t!

 

Dan Smith And Jack Bussey

 

 

Last Sunday, during half-time, we were asked what Dan Smith’s heritage number would be. They were rather surprised when we said it was 1,001, because they were aware that recent heritage numbers had been over 1,150. In fact there are only two players in our 2023 squad who have heritage numbers lower than Dan Smith and they are James Lockwood (#963) and Jack Bussey (#968).

Dan Smith made his Fev début in 2014 when he had one substitute appearance on dual reg from Wakefield. He also played 6 games for Fev in 2019 on loan from Huddersfield.

What a wonderful conversion that was from Jack Bussey after Luke Briscoe’s second try against Sheffield. It was his 14^th goal for Rovers (he also kicked 2 for London Broncos) and Sunday’s was by no means the first from close to the touchline. He really is a useful reserve goal-kicker!